To See or Not to See: Significant Other

Funny and achingly real, Signifiant Other explores friendship and love through the lens of Jordan Berman (Gideon Glick) and his close female friends.

Kiki (Sas Goldberg), Vanessa (Rebecca Naomi Jones), Laura (Lindsay Mendez), and Jordan have been friends since college. Now, as adults in their mid-20s, they live and work in New York City. Significant Other begins with Kiki’s bachelorette party. The friends all drink, dance, and enjoy their night on the town before doing more drinking and dancing at Kiki’s wedding, where she sets Vanessa up with Roger (Luke Smith). Over the course of the play, Vanessa falls in love, has a bachelorette party, and gets married, as does Laura. All the while Jordan, a gay man, watches from the sidelines. To learn how to cope with growing older and the possibility of being alone, Jordan turns to his grandmother (Barbara Barrie) for advice and support, which she offers in the best way she can: with no sugar coating of how difficult it can be.

Joshua Harmon has written Significant Other with brutal honesty and tenderness. Sweet Jordan longs for a partner as his support system slowly peels away to form new, romantic attachments of their own. Realizing that finding love is a lot harder than it seems from stories and experiencing how friendships really do change when romantic partners enter the picture, Jordan is caught in a cycle of spending lots of money on showers and weddings that may never happen for him. Jordan’s fear of being alone is palpable. When he finally gets a date with his hunky crush Will (John Behlman), his giddiness and eagerness is both heartwarming and cringe-inducing. Writing moments of such dichotomy takes skill.

There are also very specific characterizations in each of Jordan’s friends that help create a universality to Significant Other. Kiki is an upfront, loud, and bubbly HR manager at Jordan’s office. Vanessa is the artsy pessimistic book editor. Laura is the kind-hearted school teacher who is Jordan’s other half. By writing characters like that, Joshua Harmon is covering a swath of common types of people, especially recognizable to those who live in a city like New York. Indeed, there probably has been or will be someone like that in everyone’s lives. All of the characters are easy to identify with.

The cast here is superb. They all play their parts incredibly well and make each character feel authentic. Sas Goldberg brings a wonderful amount of spunk. She was a constant source of humor. Laura Mendez was the perfect foil to Gideon Glick. The chemistry between them was so on point that it felt like they had been soulmate-friends forever. Their emotionally explosive scene in the second act was heartbreaking and honest.

A poignant show, Significant Other confronts the heartache and loneliness that often comes with adult friendships. It’s truly a must-see.

Significant Other is currently at the Booth Theatre. 

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus